FUDCon:Milan 2011 - Ruby SIG meeting

[Emanuel Rietveld]

On 09/23/2011 03:57 PM, Hugh Brock wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 09:56:57AM +0200, Emanuel Rietveld wrote:
>
>> Perhaps we can make something like rvm (or the more recent rbenv - which
>> does seem simpler and more robust) central to the Fedora ruby strategy.
>> They allow you to install multiple ruby versions with multiple gem
>> stacks concurrently, and decide on a per-application basis what ruby
>> stack to use. It would be good it if it was easy for Fedora users to
>> install rvm/rbenv and multiple versions of ruby and rails via rpm and
>> have it all work out of the box.
> Yes... the problem with RVM of course is that from a production
> support standpoint it is a living horror:
>
> "What Ruby interpreter are you using?"
>
> "Hmm... let me just see if I can figure out what that environment
> variable was set to the last time the bug happened..."
>
> Endorsing RVM as a winning strategy in Fedora is ultimately just
> enabling bad practice. "Moment-of-pleasure-for-lifetime-of-pain" type
> of thing.
>
> <...>

That is a fair point, but you can mitigate this a little by deploying a
rvmrc or .rbenv-version file with your app instead of using environment
variables. If you check that file into your revision control system, the
ruby interpreter used will be consistent across deployments for a
particular version of your app.